Modern spectrum analyzers and digital oscilloscopes generally provide the capability to analyze the frequency domain content of a given input signal. Such test and measurement instruments are equipped with triggering hardware and software that is configurable to capture a desired event. Once the signal is captured, the resulting frequency domain analysis waveform is displayed with default display center frequency and span settings. The user must then manually adjust the display center frequency and span settings to highlight the areas of interest in the waveform. This can be a tedious and time consuming process. Accordingly, there exists a need to provide automatic display center frequency and span setting to simplify the operations of the test and measurement instrument.